Posts Tagged ‘executive privilege’

Two federal district judges have issued new rulings in lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration’s ban on military service by transgender individuals, mainly adverse to the government. [Addendum: After this was drafted, we received a decision from a federal magistrate judge in Baltimore on discovery issues in one of the other challenged to the transgender ban. Our summary appears at the end of this posting.]

After the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit refused to lift Seattle U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman’s preliminary injunction against the policy on July 18, she issued a new ruling on July 27 granting the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery and denying the government’s motion for a protective order that would shield President Trump from having to respond to any discovery requests. The Justice Department immediately announced that it would appeal this ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Pechman had previously denied motions for summary judgment in the case, having found that there was a need for discovery before such a ruling could take place.

On August 6, D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who had issued the first preliminary injunction against the policy last year, issued two decisions. In one, she rejected the government’s request to vacate her preliminary injunction as moot, finding that the plaintiffs have standing to challenge the “new” policy described by Defense Secretary James Mattis in his February 2018 memo to the President, and agreeing with Judge Pechman that the “new” policy is not essentially different from the “old” one announced by President Trump a year ago. However, Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted a motion by the government to dismiss President Trump as an individual named defendant in the case.

Two other lawsuits challenging the policy are pending in federal district courts in Riverside, California, and Baltimore, Maryland. In both cases, the judges have received motions from the parties that are awaiting decision, similar to those filed with Judges Pechman and Kollar-Kotelly.

To recap for those coming late to this story, Trump tweeted a ban on transgender military service on July 26, 2017, and issued a memorandum a month later describing the policy in slightly more detail, charging Secretary Mattis to propose a plan for implementation by late February, 2018, with the goal of implementing the policy later in March. Trump’s memo specified that Mattis’s previous directive to allow transgender applicants to join the military, which had been announced at the end of June 2017 to go into effect on January 1, 2018, was to be indefinitely delayed, as Trump’s policy would not allow transgender people to enlist. Mattis announced that no action would be taken against now-serving transgender personnel pending the implementation of the policy in March 2018, but there were reports of transgender personnel suffering cancellations of promotions and desire assignments and of planned medical procedures after the policy was announced.

Mattis’s memo to the president in February proposed some modifications to the policy that had been announced in Trump’s August memorandum. Transgender personnel who were already serving and had transitioned and were “stable” in their preferred gender would be allowed to continue serving, based on a determination that the investment in their training outweighed whatever “risk” they posed to the readiness of the military. Furthermore, transgender individuals who had not transitioned or been diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” would be allowed to enlist and serve, provided they refrained from transitioning and served in the sex identified at birth. Otherwise, those diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” would be prohibited from enlisting or serving, and those who could not comply with these requirements would be discharged. The proposal was based on a “finding” by a rigged special committee apparently dominated by committed opponents of transgendered service that allowing transgender people to serve in the military was harmful to the operational efficiency of the service – a finding based on no factual evidence and oblivious to the fact that transgender people had been serving openly without any problems since the Obama Administration lifted the prior ban at the end of June 2016.

Four lawsuits had been filed in response to the summer 2017 policy announcement, and in a matter of months the four district courts had issued preliminary injunctions, having found it likely that the plaintiffs would prevail on their argument that the policy violates the Equal Protection requirements of the 5th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. As compelled by the preliminary injunctions, the Defense Department allowed transgender people to submit applications to enlist beginning January 1, 2018, after losing a last-ditch court battle to continue the enlistment ban, but there were reports that the applications they received were getting very slow processing, and all indications are that few have been accepted for service.

Trump responded to Mattis’s February 2018 memo by “withdrawing” his prior memo and tweet, and authorizing Mattis to adopt the implementation plan he was recommending by late March. The Justice Department then filed motions in all the lawsuits seeking to lift the preliminary injunctions. Their argument was, in part, that the “new” policy was sufficiently different from the one that had been “withdrawn” as to moot the lawsuits. They further contended that the plaintiffs who were already serving and would be allowed to continue serving under the “new” policy no longer had standing to challenge the policy in court. The Department also argued that plaintiff’s attempts to conduct discovery in the case should be put on hold until there was a definitive appellate ruling on their motion to lift the preliminary injunctions.

On April 13, Judge Pechman rejected the government’s motion to lift the preliminary injunction, having already ordered that discovery proceed. In his initial tweet, Trump had claimed that he had consulted with generals and other experts before adopting the policy, but the identities of these people were not revealed, and the government has stonewalled against any attempt to discover their identities or any internal executive branch documents that might have been generated on this issue, making generalized claims of executive privilege. Similarly, the February memorandum released under Mattis’s name did not identify any of the individuals responsible for its composition, and naturally the plaintiffs are also seeking to discover who was involved in putting it together and what information they purported to rely upon.

Judge Pechman’s July 27 order to compel discovery specified the materials sought by the plaintiffs, and pointed out that under federal evidentiary rules, any claim of privilege against disclosure is subject to evaluation by the court. “The deliberative privilege is not absolute,” she wrote. “Several courts have recognized that the privilege does not apply in cases involving claims of governmental misconduct or where the government’s intent is at issue.”

The question, under 9th Circuit precedents, is “whether plaintiffs’ need for the materials and the need for accurate fact-finding override the government’s interest in non-disclosure. In making this determination, relevant factors include: (1) the relevance of the evidence; (2) the availability of other evidence; (3) the government’s role in the litigation; and (4) the extent to which disclosure would hinder frank and independent discussion regarding contemplated policies and decisions.” There is a formal process for invoking privilege, which requires the government to “provide precise and certain reasons for preserving the confidentiality of designated material.”

In this case, Judge Pechman had previously determined that discrimination because of gender identity involves a “suspect classification” for purposes of equal protection requirements, which means the government has the burden of proving that there is a compelling justification for the discrimination. In this case, however, the government has articulated only a generalized judgment that service by transgender individuals is too “risky” based on no facts whatsoever. Judge Pechman concluded in granting the plaintiffs’ discovery motion that “the deliberative process privilege does not apply in this case.”

The government had moved for a protective order “precluding discovery directed at President Trump.” While conceding that Trump has “not provided substantive responses or produced a privilege log” listing specifically what information has to be protected against disclosure, the government contended that “because the requested discovery raises ‘separation of powers concerns,’ Plaintiffs must exhaust discovery ‘from sources other than the President and his immediate White House advisors and staff’ before he is required to formally invoke the privilege.”

Judge Pechman noted that so far the government has refused to provide any information about how the policy decision was made or developed, and has failed to identify the specific documents and other information for which it claims privilege. In a footnote, she commented, “The Court notes that Defendants have steadfastly refused to identify even one general or military official President Trump consulted before announcing the ban.” Thus, she found, there was no basis for the court to evaluate “whether the privilege applies and if so, whether Plaintiffs have established a showing of need sufficient to overcome it.” Indeed, she concluded in a prior decision, as far as the record stands, it looks as if Trump made the whole thing up himself without relying on any military expertise. Thus, she has preliminarily rejected the government’s contention that the policy would enjoy the deference normally extended to military policies adopted based on the specialized training and expertise of the military policy makers.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s August 6 ruling focused on an issue that Judge Pechman had previously decided: whether the plaintiffs had standing to continue challenging the policy after Mattis’s memo supplanted the “withdrawn” earlier policy announcements. She had little trouble in determining that all the plaintiffs, even those who are currently-serving transgender personnel who would be allowed to consider serving under the “new” policy, still had standing, which requires a finding that implementing the policy would cause them harm.

“The Court rejects Defendants’ argument that Plaintiffs no longer have standing because they are not harmed by the Mattis Implementation Plan,” she wrote, stating that “the effect of that plan would be that individuals who require or have undergone gender transition would be absolutely disqualified from military service, individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria would be largely disqualified from military service, and, to the extent that there are any individuals who identify as ‘transgender’ but do not fall under the first two categories, they would be allowed to serve, but only ‘in their biological sex’ (which means that openly transgender persons would generally not be allowed to serve in conformance with their identity.)” Furthermore, those who have already transitioned and are now serving would be doing so under the stigma of having been labeled as “unfit” for military service and presenting an undue risk to military readiness, and would likely suffer prejudice in terms of their assignments and their treatment by fellow military personnel, as well as emotional harm.

“The Mattis Implementation Plan sends a blatantly stigmatizing message to all members of the military hierarchy that has a unique and damaging effect on a narrow and identifiable set of individuals, of which Plaintiffs are members,” she wrote. They would be serving “pursuant to an exception to a policy that explicitly marks them as unfit for service. No other service members are so afflicted. These Plaintiffs are denied equal treatment because they will be the only service members who are allowed to serve only based on a technicality; as an exception to a policy that generally paints them as unfit.”

She concluded that “because their stigmatic injury derives from this unequal treatment, it is sufficient to confer standing.” She pointed out that beyond stigmatization, the Implementation Plan “creates a substantial risk that Plaintiffs will suffer concrete harms to their careers in the near future. There is a substantial risk that the plan will harm Plaintiffs’ career development in the form of reduced opportunities for assignments, promotion, training, and deployment. These harms are an additional basis for Plaintiffs’ standing.” She rejected the government’s contention that these harms were only “speculative.”

Furthermore, she rejected the claim that Trump’s “withdrawal” of his August 2017 memorandum and the substitution of the Mattis Implementation Plan made the existing lawsuits moot, agreeing with Judge Pechman that the “new” plan was merely a method of “implementing” the previously announced policy. She found that the Implementation Plan “prevents service by transgender individuals,” just as Trump had directed in August 2017, and the minor deviations from the complete categorical ban were not significant enough to make it substantially different.

Thus she refused to dissolve the preliminary injunction. She refrained from ruling on motions for summary judgment on the merits of the equal protection claim, because there are sharply contested facts in this case and no discovery has taken place, so it can’t be decided purely as a matter of law. The facts count here in court, even if they don’t seem to count in the White House or the Defense Department.

However, Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted the government’s motion to partially dissolve the injunction as it applies personally to Trump, and granted the motion to “dismiss the President himself as a party to this case. Throughout this lawsuit,” she wrote, “Plaintiffs ask this Court to enjoin a policy that represents an official, non-ministerial act of the President, and declare that policy unlawful. Sound separation-of-power principles counsel the Court against granting these forms of relief against the President directly.” Thus, she concluded, there was no reason to retain Trump as a defendant. If the Plaintiffs prevail on the merits, an injunction aimed at the Defense Department’s leadership preventing the policy from taking effect will provide complete relief.

The Plaintiffs complained that removing Trump from the case as a defendant would undermine their attempt to discover the information necessary to make their case, since individuals who are parties to litigation are particularly susceptible to discovery requests. The judge wrote that “it would not be appropriate to retain the President as a party to this case simply because it will be more complicated to seek discovery from him if he is dismissed. To the extent that there exists relevant and appropriate discovery related to the President, Plaintiffs will still be able to obtain that discovery despite the President not being a party to the case.” And, she concluded, “Plaintiffs will be able to enforce their legal rights and obtain all relief sought in this case without the President as a party.”

The judge treated as moot the Defendants’ motion for a protective order shielding Trump from having to respond to discovery requests. “However,” she wrote, “the Court reiterates that dismissing the President as a party to this case does not mean that Plaintiffs are prevented from pursuing discovery related to the President. The court understands that the parties dispute whether discovery related to the President which has been sought by Plaintiffs is precluded by the deliberative process or presidential communication privileges, and the Court makes no ruling on those disputes at this point. The Court will be issuing further opinions addressing other dispositive motions that have been filed in this case. After all of those opinions have been issued, if necessary, the Court will give the parties further guidance on the resolution of the discovery requests in this case.” In a footnote, Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted Judge Pechman’s July 27 discovery order, and that defendants were appealing it to the 9th Circuit. The judge emphasized that the preliminary injunction remains in effect for all of the remaining defendants in the case, so the policy may not be implemented while the case continues.

The possibility that Trump will be ordered to submit to questioning under oath in at least one of these cases remains a reality, but any attempt by the Plaintiffs to do so would undoubtedly arouse spirited opposition from the Defense Department, officially based on claims of privilege, but realistically due to the likelihood that Trump would perjure himself under such questioning. Recall the historical precedent: The House of Representatives voted to impeach President Clinton based, in part, on the charge that he committed perjury during questioning before a grand jury by the Special Counsel investigating his affair with Monica Lewinski. Thus, at least in that case, the House considered presidential perjury to be an impeachable offense.

On August 14, U.S. Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite, to whom Baltimore U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis had referred discovery matters in Stone v. Trump, another one of the pending cases, issued a ruling granting in part the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery of deliberative materials regarding Trump’s July 2017 tweet, August 2017 memorandum, the “activities of the DoD’s so-called panel of experts and its working groups” who put together the memorandum ultimately submitted by Mattis to the President in February 2018, and deliberative materials regarding that Implementation Plan and the President’s March memorandum, “including any participation or interference in that process by anti-transgender activists and lobbyists.” However, noting that a motion is pending before Judge Garbis to dismiss Trump as a defendant in the case, Judge Copperthite declined to rule on the government’s request for a protective order that would shield Trump from having to respond to discovery requests directed to him, “pending the resolution of the motion to dismiss President Trump as a party.” Cooperthite wrote that “no interrogatories or document requests will be directed to President Trump as a party, but may be directed to other parties pursuant to this Memorandum Opinion. If the Motion to Dismiss is denied, the Court will revisit the issue of the protective order as to President Trump.”

Cooperthite faced a practical dilemma in dealing with the government’s requests to shield Trump from discovery. “On July 27, 2017, President Trump tweeted transgender persons would no longer be able to serve in the military and as for any deliberative process, simply stated this policy occurred after consulting with ‘my Generals and military experts.’ There is no evidence to support the concept that ‘my Generals and military experts’ would have the information Plaintiffs request. There is no evidence provided to this Court that ‘my Generals and military experts’ are identified, in fact do exist, or that they would be included in document requests and interrogatories propounded to the Executive Branch, excluding the President. By tweeting his decisions to the world, the President has, in fact narrowed the focus of Plaintiffs’ inquiries to the President himself. The Presidential tweets put the President front and enter as the potential discriminating official.” So there is a real question whether discovery that doesn’t include President Trump is at all meaningful, since the ultimate legal question in the litigation is the intent of the government in adopting the ban which is, at bottom, Trump’s intent. On the other hand, discovery directed at President Trump raises serious questions about separation of powers and the traditional respect for the confidentiality of internal White House policy deliberations.

“So many factors are unknown at this juncture in the litigation,” wrote Copperthite. “It is unknown whether Plaintiffs can obtain the information necessary from the non-Presidential discovery to define the ‘intent’ of the government with respect to the transgender ban. Defendants offer as an alternative, a stay of discovery with respect to the President, until the Motion to Dismiss the President as a party is decided. If the President, as the discriminating official, tweeted his transgender ban sua sponte as alleged, this Court sees no alternative to obtaining the intent of the government other than denying the protective order with respect to President Trump.” However, he wrote, precedents “instruct this Court to give deference to the executive branch because ‘occasions for constitutional confrontation between the two branches should be avoided whenever possible.’” Thus, Copperthite decided to put off deciding the protective order issue until after Judge Garbis decides whether to dismiss Trump as a party, but for now will order the defendants only to comply with discovery requests directed to defendants other than Trump, Secretary Mattis and the Secretaries of the various military branches.

On August 25, 2017, President Donald J. Trump issued a Memorandum to the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, directing that effective March 23, 2018, transgender people would not be allowed to serve in the military. The Memorandum charged Defense Secretary James Mattis with the task of submitting an implementation plan to the White House by February 21. Mattis submitted something in writing on February 23, but its contents have not been made public.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a statement late on March 22 with Judge Marsha J. Pechman of the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington, essentially refusing to comply with her Order issued on March 20 to reveal the identity of the “generals” and other “military experts” whom Trump purportedly consulted before his Twitter announcement last July 26 that transgender people would not be allowed to serve in any capacity in the armed forces. Karnoski v. Trump, Case 2:17-cv-01297-MJP (Defendants’ Response to the Court’s March 20, 2018, Order, filed March 22, 2018), responding to Karnoski v. Trump, 2018 US. Dist. LEXIS 45696 (W.D. Wash. March 20, 2018).

Judge Pechman is presiding over a lawsuit filed last fall by Lambda Legal and Outserve-SLDN challenging the policy. Pechman denied DOJ’s motion to dismiss that case and granted a motion by the plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction against the policy going into effect. In order to grant the injunction, the judge had to conclude that it was likely the policy would be found to be unconstitutional and that an injunction pending the outcome of the case was necessary to protect the legitimate interests of people who would be adversely affected by the policy. Karnoski v. Trump, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167232 (W.D. Wash. Oct. 10, 2017), motion to stay preliminary injunction denied, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167232, 2017 WL 6311305 (W.D. Wash. Dec. 11, 2017); 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 213420 (W.D. Wash. Dec. 29, 2017).

Then discovery in the case began, and DOJ refused in February to comply with the plaintiffs’ request for the identity of the “generals” and “experts” Trump claimed in his tweet to have consulted. DOJ argued that their defense in the case would not rely on any testimony or documentation from such individuals, since they would not be defending the August 25 policy announcement, but rather some new policy yet to be announced after Mattis submitted his recommendations.

Judge Pechman, ruling on a requested order to compel discovery filed by the plaintiffs, observed in an opinion issued on March 14 that “this case arises not out of any new or future policy that is in the process of being developed, but rather out of the current policy prohibiting military serve by openly transgender persons, announced on Twitter by President Trump on July 26, 2017, and formalized in an August 25, 2017 Presidential Memorandum.” Karnoski v. Trump, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43011 (W.D. Wash., March 14, 2018).

She continued, “Defendants cannot reasonably claim that there are no individuals likely to have discoverable information and no documents relevant to their claims and defenses regarding the current policy. President Trump’s own announcement states “after consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow . . . Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”

Judge Pechman asked, “Which Generals and military experts were consulted? Which Service Chiefs and Secretaries provided counsel? What information did they review or rely upon in formulating the current policy? Were the court to credit Defendants’ Initial Disclosures and Amended Disclosures, the answer to these questions apparently would be ‘none.’” The judge gave DOJ five days to comply.

DOJ responded by seeking “clarification” and raising the prospect that the president could invoke “executive privilege” to refuse to comply with the discovery request, in order to protect the confidentiality of presidential deliberations.

Responding to this argument early on March 20, Pechman issued a new opinion, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45696. She wrote, “The Court cannot rule on a ‘potential’ privilege, particularly where the allegedly privileged information is unidentified,” and pointed out that DOJ had not invoked executive privilege in its earlier incomplete responses to the plaintiffs’ discovery requests, or in any of their prior motions to the court. She pointed out that under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, “in order to assert privilege, a party must ‘expressly make the claim’ and ‘describe the nature of the documents, communications, or tangible things not produced or disclosed – and do so in a manner that, without revealing information itself privileged or protected, will enable other parties to assess the claim.”

Furthermore, she noted, “While Defendants claim they do not intend to rely on information concerning President Trump’s deliberative process, their claim is belied by their ongoing defense of the current policy as one involving ‘the complex, subtle, and professional decisions as to the composition . . . of a military force . . .’ to which ‘considerable deference’ is owed.” Of course, claiming that the court should “defer” to “professional decisions” requires showing that this policy was adopted as a result of “professional decisions” and not based solely on the President’s political concerns.

The refusal to disclose what advice the president relied upon in announcing this policy leads to the inevitable conclusion either that such consultations did not take place, as Judge Pechman intimated on March 14, or if they did the president was likely acting against the advice of his generals and military experts. Anybody reasonably informed on trends in the federal courts would have concluded by last summer that a revived ban on transgender service would be seriously vulnerable to constitutional challenge, and military commanders with a full year of experience in having openly transgender personnel would know that the policy implemented by the Obama Administration effective the beginning of July 2016 had not led to any problems with good order, morale, or substantial health care costs.

Judge Pechman gave DOJ until 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on March 22 to comply with her discovery order. DOJ submitted its statement refusing to do so shortly before that deadline, once again arguing that because they did not intend to defend last summer’s policy pronouncements, they were standing on their position that they were not required to make any of the disclosures in dispute since they would not be calling any witnesses, documents or studies for the purpose of defending those policies.

As this is being written on March 23, there has been no indication by the White House that an implementation policy or a revised version of last summer’s policy is being announced. This is not surprising, since three other federal district judges as well as Judge Pechman issued preliminary injunctions last year against implementation of the policy that was to go into effect on March 23, and two federal courts of appeals (the D.C. Circuit and the 4th Circuit) rejected petitions by the Justice Department to stay two of the preliminary injunctions.

In fact, in light of the injunctions the Defense Department notified its recruitment staff in December about the criteria for enlistment of transgender applicants that would go into effect on January 1, 2018, and that process did go into effect, with a subsequent announcement by the Defense Department that at least one transgender applicant, whose name was not disclosed, had completed the enlistment process, marking the first time that an openly transgender individual has been allowed to enlist.

In a slippery move, DOJ may be trying to render the existing preliminary injunctions and lawsuits irrelevant by arguing that the policy announced in the August 25 Memorandum has never gone into effect and that, pursuant to Mattis’s undisclosed recommendations, it never will. Meanwhile, thousands of transgender military personnel find their employment status in a state of uncertainty, as do transgender reserve members or military service academy students working towards graduating and joining the active forces.

Perhaps some hint of what the new policy will be can be found in the Defense Department’s enlistment policies announced in December, which would preclude enlisting transgender individuals unless they are medically certified to have been “stable” with respect to their gender identity for at least 18 months, and thus unlikely to seek to transition while in military service, either because they have already completely transitioned from the gender identified at birth to their currently identified gender or presumably have foresworn any intent to transition while in the military.

This disclosure controversy relates back to the likely motivation behind Trump’s initial July tweet, which came shortly after the Houses of Representatives had rejected an amendment to a pending Defense spending bill that would have blocked any spending for “sex reassignment surgery” for military personnel. There were reports at the time that congressional sponsors of that amendment warned the President that he did not have sufficient Republican votes in the House to pass the bill in the absence of such a provision. Trump’s apparent solution to his immediate political problem was to bar all transgender military service, which would remove the possibility of any serving member seeking to access the military health care budget to pay for their transition, since such a request would lead to their immediate discharge under the policy he announced. In other words, DOJ is attempting to bury the fact that Trump probably lied in his Tweet when he intimated that this change of policy was the result of recommendations from generals and military experts, but their stonewalling leads to Judge Pechman’s obvious conclusion stated on March 14.

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About the Author

Arthur S. Leonard, a professor at New York Law School since 1982, edits the monthly newsletter Lesbian/Gay Law Notes, and is co-author of Sexuality Law (Carolina Academic Press) and AIDS Law in a Nutshell (West Publishing Co.). He writes on legal issues for Gay City News (New York), and serves as a trustee of the Jewish Board of Family & Children's Services of New York.